I composed my Sonata for Bassoon and Piano for the wonderful bassoonist Jeffrey Keesecker. When discussing what aspects he would like to incorporate in the new work, he mentioned that he particularly appreciated playing lyrical music, and that he would like a work that he could also share with his students. I considered which pieces my wind-playing friends had enjoyed playing as students, and I drew on the language of the sonatas of Poulenc and Mozart’s bassoon concerto. In its three movements, the sonata depicts many characters and moods – plaintive, grotesque, driving, whimsical – within a neo-Classical tonal language and form.